KogWis 2010: Potsdam “sans souci”

Abstract

October 3rd 2010, a lovely fall day in Germany, and the people are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the German reunification. On the same day, many people from all over the world came to the beautiful city of Potsdam (next to Berlin) for the 10th biannual meeting of the German Society for Cognitive Science. When people think about the city of Potsdam, they almost immediately come up with statements about Schloss Sanssouci. This impressive castle with its widespread park and the botanical garden is definitely worth a visit, but it is also of great interest for people like me working in the domain of spatial cognition, especially on landmarks. Even though it would be interesting to discuss the history of the castle and other historic events that took place in Potsdam, I should better focus on the conference at the University of Potsdam (October 3rd–October 6th 2010). The building in which the conference was held is located a few kilometers away from Sanssouci but is close to the famous Babelsberg film studios. This modern and comfortable university complex is ideal for research and scientific discourses. During the meeting, the outgoing president of the German Society for Cognitive Science, Markus Knauff (University of Giesen, Germany), stated that the society reached the mark of ten biannual meetings in just 16 years (since 1994), which is probably a unique incident. Almost 300 scientists from 19 different countries—covering four continents—participated in and contributed to this year’s conference. They provided a total of 168 oral presentations (symposia talks not included) and about 40 posters. Five invited symposia were held on Complex Cognition; Decisions: Perspectives from Philosophy, Neuropsychology, and Cognitive Science; New Theories of Rationality; Optionality of Information Structure; and Symbolizing Emotions. Additionally, six regular symposia offered topics with the foci on Adaptivity of Hybrid Cognitive Systems; Cognitive Modeling in Human–Machine-Systems; Frames: A General Format of Representation?; Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Memory; Perspectives for Cognitive Ethnology in the Cognitive Sciences; and Visual Attention and Gestures in Language Processing. The majority of talks were presented in paper sessions covering research from Analogical Reasoning and Applied Cognitive Science to topics such as Spatial Cognition and Visual Perception. In order to realize such an enormous amount of research within 3 days only, parallel sessions had to be offered. Questions could be raised right after the talks, and there was some room for discussion. However, in many sessions—I not only experienced this in the session on Spatial Cognition where I presented my current wayfinding and landmark research—the discussions were continued right after the sessions in the lecture halls, in the seminar rooms, or (which was probably the best way to do it) in the foyer during the coffee breaks. The volunteers of the University offered plenty of beverages and snacks so that quite a few people had a hard time finishing the coffee breaks in order to reach the following presentations. But such breaks were excellent for personal meetings and maybe talking about future cooperations. On Monday late afternoon—right after the Presidential Address and before the Members Meeting—the hallway was very crowded, since the posters were presented at that time. Unfortunately, the authors only had 1 hour for K. Hamburger (&) Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Otto-Behaghel-Str 10F, 35394 Giessen, Germany e-mail: kai.hamburger@psychol.uni-giessen.de URL: www.uni-giessen.de/cms/cognition/hamburger